On this week's episode I convert my any cubic I three mega from this standalone
spool holder which I hate into one built into the machine to make it completely
portable and then I take on my Prusa mk2s that produced this blob and I'll show
you how I fixed it all on today's Filament Friday. Filament Friday is
brought to you every week by the generous donations of my patreon
supporters I found this snap-on filament holder
from user Kurioso on Thingiverse and I thought this is perfect for my i3. I loaded
in the main bracket which snaps to the frame of the mega i3 and it's a
decent design there's a few things I would change but the one thing I noticed
is that the bottom of this thing really curves and it threw me off at first I
just put it on the bed and printed it thinking it was flat and I got this the
bottom one it didn't even print it rolled up so I stopped it redid it I got
it to print and then it warped again so what I did is lower this whole thing a
couple of millimeters I grabbed it and just Z offset it down to millimeters and
all I did was cut the whole bottom off which really didn't matter for the
design but it made the whole thing flat and easier to print you can see a little
bit of it's sticking below the bed and that'll just get cut off. Those will
disappear once I slice this thing the settings that I used I use my anycubic
to print it and I use a 30% fill and I did generate supports because it's got
that arm that angled arm and I did a point three layer height three top and
bottom layers three perimeter shells temperature wise 40 degrees on the bed
extruder was 215 degrees C I'm using some black PLA speed 60 millimeters per
second so this should be a pretty easy print and I sliced it and once I did
that you can see the supports all across the angled bracket here the support and
then some on the corner or the rounded edge and then underneath you see it just
cut that extra off so now this thing's completely flat but I wanted to make
sure it was so I scrolled down the layers and saw that the first layer did
indeed put everything down flat so this thing should hold and stick
just the way I wanted and it said we take two hours and six minutes. Next I
had to bring in the actual spool holder which snaps into that bracket and for
this I just, it came in sideways so I said place surface on bed grab the bottom of
it and then placed it and then centered it on the bed itself this I wasn't gonna
do a whole lot different same settings 30% generate supports same layer height
point three same temperature settings so I just clicked prepare to print and to
put all the support material all the way around it including the little snap in
area this took longer three hours and seven minutes to print and here's the
bracket after it finished without warping this is the one that came out
good now that one with warping will probably still work but I wanted it
straight I wanted to look good so the support itself just kind of pulled right
off except for a little end here I had to kind of work and break that away but
it wasn't bad now this would have been eliminated if he would have just lowered
that angle bracket to the bottom it really didn't need to be up there but I
broke away the last bit on the curve and this thing was ready to snap into the
into the frame now it's hard to see here cuz it's black on black but it snapped
right in easily and it held really tight so the next step was to get the actual
spool holder in and the filament or the support just peeled away this was
actually fun to do it just peeled away and I had already taken the bottom off I
didn't film it and it snapped in nicely so then all I had to do is remove the
filament spool from the crappie holder which I was glad to get rid of slide it
under this guy and then just kind of make sure it cleared to the filament
sensor and I have plenty of gap underneath it so this thing worked out
perfect I love this design and now I can pick this whole thing up and the
filament spool comes with it no more separate filament holder and now onto
the Prusa I actually started a print I trusted the auto level it didn't stick
and this is what I came back to just a huge mess and I couldn't just use a heat
gun on this because a lot of the parts of the extruder are plastic so I would
melt that so I had to break this away very very carefully in the process I
wasn't careful enough because I broke the temp sensor you can see the
wire stuck here I just wasn't careful enough I actually ripped the sensor
apart there's the dangling wires and I ended up taking the whole block out
because I couldn't get the nozzle off it was so tight and I stripped a set screw
with a temperature sensor so I ended up replacing the whole thing and then I put
a new one on new temperature sensor and I even got that rubber sock on top of it
to help and you can see warpage in a little bit of plastic around it that's
from the heat gun from me trying to get this thing free so it was just a pain I
put everything together and it wouldn't work and then I found out I had broken
the height sensor the bottom of it should have a little black cap like you
see here that contains some electronics so it wasn't working I couldn't find a
sensor anywhere I had to go actually to Prusa and it wasn't on their site I
had to log in and contact him and then it showed up and then I was able to buy
it. This thing wasn't cheap I mean it was $10 for the sensor but it was like 23
dollars to ship it they did give it to me pretty quick and I was able to
install it and then I printed the frog sample print and everything looked
normal again so I was happy my prusa was back running and printing but I hope
this never happens again I don't want to go through that mess.
Getting the spool holder mounted on this guy has been fantastic I love it
I've been printing with it for a while it's completely portable that was the
one thing I didn't like about this printer having that separate spool
holder so now the electronics everything is contained I can move it around just
you know like both these guys I can move it around and do whatever I need to do
the plastic assembly for the extruder I never really
thought about it but that's kind of a pain that I can't use a heat gun so that
is a drawback to this but this thing prints amazing these have been two very
reliable printers for me and they're a decent size this one's like around 300
bucks this one's like $600 as a kit so it is a better printer as far as print
quality can do higher temperatures and things like that but there are
definitely features I like about this so either one is a winner in my book at
some point I'd like to do an i3 print off and you know is it worth the extra 300
bucks in some cases it definitely is maybe in some people's budget it isn't
but anyway that's done and this was a lot of fun I'm glad I could get this
done I've been really really busy and swamped but thanks for tuning in
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opportunities to watch the channel so that's it for this week I hope you
enjoyed it I'll see you next time on Filament Friday